NORTHAMPTON – With testimony all but concluded in the Cara Rintala murder trial, the prosecution will have one final chance to connect the dots Thursday in a case lacking substantial forensic evidence.

After resting its case Wednesday morning, the prosecution had produced no fingerprints or DNA evidence tying Rintala directly to the murder. None of its witnesses offered a theory as to the sequence of events that led to the strangling. Its strongest evidence has been a timeline offered by a medical examiner that would put Rintala in the house with her wife at the time of the murder based on the morbidity of the body when police arrived on the scene at 7:15 p.m.

The defense worked to cast doubt on that timeline in its cross-examination of medical examiner Joann Richmond, who originally listed the time of death as “unknown.” It has also attempted to implicate two other people as suspects.

Rintala, 47, is charged with murdering her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, by strangling her to death in their Granby home on March 29, 2010. The prosecution maintains that after killing her wife, the defendant poured paint on her body to conceal evidence, then hacked at the door with a shovel to make it look like someone tried to break in.

Dr. Frederick Bieber, a DNA expert who teaches at Harvard University, disputed prosecution testimony about DNA found on a rag that Rintala allegedly left in a McDonalds trash bin on the day of the murder.

The other witnesses were a Ludlow firefighter who worked with the defendant, the pastor of the South Hadley church the couple attended and a member of the church’s congregation. All three testified that they never observed acrimony between the two women.

Northwestern First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne, the lead prosecutor, laid out his theory of the crime at a bail hearing for Rintala but has not elicited a continuous narrative through any of his witnesses.

There were hints of the closing arguments Wednesday afternoon when, with the jury gone home for the day, the two sides worked with Judge Mary-Lou Rup on her instructions to the jury. Defense lawyer Luke Ryan asked for a “missing witness” instruction to suggest why the prosecution did not call Mark Oleksak, a co-worker of the victim, to the stand. Testimony showed that Oleksak and Annamarie Ritala texted each other frequently, professing their love for each other and arranging to meet. Hoose has suggested that police did not look hard enough at Oleksak as a suspect.

Gagne told Rup that Olesak has a strong alibi and that he cannot by law testify to what the deceased said to him. Rup said she will not give that instruction. She also declined to instruct the jury about considering manslaughter as an alternative to murder.

The defense is scheduled to call its last witness at 9 a.m. Thursday. Rintala has said she does not intend to testify.